Free Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions by Ralph Lee Smith Page B

easy-to-play variant of his main line of products. But that’s guesswork. As with so many features of scheitholt and dulcimer history, we have barely started down the path of discovery.

4 Virginia Traditions

Virginia Traditions
    It seems likely that, in making his 1832 dulcimer, John Scales of Floyd County, Virginia, was following or adapting a design that existed in the early dulcimer world of southern and southwestern Virginia. Features of the design were perpetuated in traditional Virginian dulcimer-making throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
    These features can be seen in a 19th-century dulcimer owned by Polly Sumner of Pulaski, Virginia, illustrated in figure 4.1. Her instrument was on loan to the Jeff Matthews Memorial Museum in Galax when I saw and photographed it. All Sumner knew about it was that it had been in her barn for a very long time! The instrument came with a bow, not unusual for 19th-century Virginia dulcimers, although bowing had largely passed away by the 20th century. The dulcimer owned by Jacob Connoy, found by Kimberly Burnette-Dean in 1849 Grayson County estate records (see chapter 3), also came with a bow.
    As with the Scales dulcimer, Sumner’s instrument has four equidistant strings. Wire staple frets pass under two of the four strings. The player fretted the two strings that pass over the frets with a stick or piece of goose quill, while the other two sounded as drones.
    Traditional single-bout Virginia dulcimers do not have heart-shaped sound holes. Instead, the sound holes are f -shaped or S -shaped or consist of various patterns of small holes. In Sumner’s instrument, the upper pair of sound holes consists of a pattern of small diamonds, and the lower pair of small drilled holes in an S -shaped pattern.
    As with the Scales dulcimer, two sound holes are drilled into the fret-board, which is hollowed out. This feature makes the fretboard part of the soundbox. Hollowed-out fretboards into which two, three, or four holes are drilled are a standard feature of traditional single-bout dulcimers. Drilled fretboards do not appear on traditional hourglass dulcimers.
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    Figure 4.1. Dulcimer owned by Polly Sumner of Pulaski, Virginia, from the second half of the 19th century.
    Hourglass-shaped dulcimers have a depression or “strum hollow” at the foot of the fretboard, which provides clearance for the action of the strummer. This practical feature, cut into the solid rather than hollowed-out fretboards that are usually found on hourglass dulcimers, is not found on single-bout dulcimers. The makers apparently never thought of shortening the inside hollow to accommodate it.
    The absence of a strum hollow often results in damage to the bottom of the fretboard by the action of the strummer. Such damage, consisting of grooves worn in the wood, can be seen on Sumner’s instrument. Many old Virginia instruments show plenty of strumming damage. In a few cases, the wood has been worn all the way through.
    Sumner’s instrument has three small feet, a feature that it shares with many old dulcimers of both the single-bout and hourglass traditions. In addition, a pattern of sound holes is drilled into the bottom, a characteristic that is found in old Virginia dulcimers but does not appear in hourglass dulcimers.
    Like the Scales dulcimer, Virginia dulcimers often have semicircular tailpieces, which may be solid, pierced with one to three holes, or open in the shape of the letter D . Sumner’s dulcimer has an open-D tailpiece with a horizontal strut in the middle.
    As noted in chapter 1, the usual vibrating string length (VSL) of traditional single-bout dulcimers, 24 to 26 inches, is shorter than the typical 28-inch VSL of hourglass dulcimers. Scales’s dulcimer, at 23b inches, is slightly shorter than even the usual minimum. The VSL of Sumner’s dulcimer is 25¼ inches.
SAMUEL F. RUSSELL (1860–1946)
    The tradition represented by both